The state Plant Board will hold a special meeting at 2:30 p.m. Friday at a state agriculture research station that, according to its scientists, has been hit by dicamba several times over the past four growing seasons.
The meeting at the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture's research station at Keiser, in Mississippi County, will include a tour of damaged soybean fields rendered virtually useless for experiments.
Some 300 complaints of possible pesticide drift -- not just of dicamba -- have been received this year by the Plant Board, a division of the state Department of Agriculture.
Dicamba was named specifically as a suspect in about 115 complaints, with most being filed in late June and July, well after a ban on in-crop use of the herbicide took effect May 26.
Signs of dicamba damage on crops -- mainly soybeans and cotton -- and other vegetation susceptible to the herbicide, including vegetables and fruit, usually appear about two weeks after exposure, leading farmers and weed scientists to believe the ban has been violated. That lag time also hampers the ability to track the source of off-target movement.
Another third of the 300 complaints didn't name a suspected pesticide.
Mike Duren, manager of the research station in Keiser, said Wednesday that all 350 acres of soybeans not tolerant of dicamba show the usual signs of dicamba damage -- curled, yellowed leaves cupped into the shape of a cobra's head. The station has another 400 acres in corn, sorghum, rice and dicamba-tolerant soybeans.
Duren said Jason Norsworthy, a UA weed scientist who was recognized in 2018 by the Weed Science Society of America as the nation's top researcher, had planned an extensive evaluation of dicamba drift this summer, using the research station's breeding plots of dicamba-tolerant soybeans and beans that are not tolerant of dicamba.
"That didn't happen," Duren said, because dicamba damage stole in before the experiments could start.
Officials with the federal Environmental Protection Agency visited damaged fields at the Keiser station and other sites in Missouri and Tennessee last year as part of its decision on whether to allow dicamba's continued use. The agency decided last fall to allow the product's use through at least 2020.
The Plant Board rarely meets away from its Little Rock headquarters, but Terry Fuller, a board member from Phillips County, had the Keiser research fields in mind as a site when he asked chairman Greg Hay of Conway last week to call the meeting. "I think it's important we look at real damage, not just through a slide show, and see what an entire damaged field looks like," said Fuller, who's been on the board since 2013 representing the Arkansas Seed Growers Association.
The Keiser station, he said, has a variety of field trials going on throughout the growing season, including studies on dicamba and its volatility, or tendency to move off target. "You can't do a volatility study on dicamba when your fields have already been sprayed," Fuller said.
As in every crop season since 2016, most of the complaints about herbicide damage to crops have come from Mississippi, Crittenden and Craighead counties. Nearly all of the case files are still open, with samples undergoing testing. State law allows fines of up to $25,000 for "egregious" violations of pesticide regulations.
As weeds in the South and Midwest grew resistant to glyphosate, commonly known as Roundup, Monsanto began genetically modifying soybeans and cotton to be tolerant of dicamba. Dicamba has been used around homes and farms for decades but seldomly during the height and heat of the growing season because of a propensity to move off target.
To go along with the new dicamba-tolerant soybeans and cotton, Monsanto released a formulation of dicamba, called Xtendimax, which was designed to be less susceptible to off-target movement, whether by physical drift or through changes in weather and temperature. Now owned by Bayer, Monsanto says the new dicamba formulations are safe, as long as application instructions are closely followed -- a claim questioned by weed scientists. Other new dicamba formulations are marketed by BASF, DowDuPont and Syngenta.
Monsanto sold dicamba-tolerant cottonseed in 2015 and dicamba-tolerant soybeans in 2016, well before winning EPA approval for Xtendimax. That left farmers without a dicamba that was legal to use with the new seeds, until the EPA approved the herbicide in November 2016. Arkansas received about three dozen dicamba complaints in 2016. Bayer continues to market the seeds and Xtendimax as a package.
In Lambrook, a Phillips County community about 35 miles southwest of Helena-West Helena, Mike Montgomery said every part of his 1,800 acres of Roundup Ready beans, which are tolerant of glyphosate but not of dicamba, has been damaged this year by dicamba. This year, he said, is the third season for such damage.
"This time, damage is a hundred times worse," Montgomery, who's been farming for 46 years, said Tuesday. "This isn't from straight physical drift. This is damage that is uniform across every field, from every edge."
He lost about 8 bushels an acre in yield on 440 acres of soybeans in 2017 from dicamba damage. "The neighbor who made the application did everything right," he said. "He sprayed to the best of his ability, with the wind blowing away from my fields." A change in wind direction that night helped the herbicide lift from those plants and move to his crops, with the damaging effects becoming visible about two weeks later, he said.
In 2018, soybeans grew out of the damage and losses were minimal, he said.
"The problem this year is so much [dicamba] is being put out during a long spraying season," Montgomery said, referring to a planting season delayed by an unusually wet spring. Once crops were finally put in, farmers had little time, if any at all, to legally spray before the May 25 cutoff date. Some farmers continue to spray, he said.
Montgomery said he doesn't have much hope that his growth-stunted beans this year will survive. "They start growing again, but then they get hit again," he said.
Montgomery also planted 550 acres of dicamba-tolerant Xtend beans and said he has kept those fields clean without using dicamba. "I've never sprayed dicamba and never will because of the harm it can do to others," he said.
While Montgomery has filed a complaint with the Plant Board, he doesn't expect much to come from it or from Plant Board inspectors out in the field. "No enforcement effort is being made," he said. "They're just doing the paperwork. They're not stopping anybody. They're not fining anybody. They're letting people spray today."
Brett Dawson, a spokesman for the agriculture department, said Wednesday that inspectors are continuing to do their jobs and haven't been told to back off on enforcing the ban or to stop seeking spray records from potential violators. Investigations are still early in most of the complaints, he said.
Dawson also confirmed an incident several weeks ago involving the owner of an east Arkansas aerial application service and a Plant Board inspector seeking records. "Plant Industry inspectors did go to Empty Pockets Flying Service and were told by the owner that he didn't have time to provide the documents," Dawson wrote in an email. "The supervisor of these inspectors contacted the owner and coordinated a time for the inspectors to come back and retrieve the requested records. The inspectors have received those documents."
Fuller, a seed dealer, has visited Montgomery's farm since Montgomery first noticed problems in mid-June. "I've sold Mike since 1982, so we've had 30-plus years of being friends and in business together. His damage is the worst I've even seen," he said. "You won't believe it until you see it, and when you see it, you can't un-see it."
In 2017, farmers were allowed, initially, to spray dicamba throughout the growing season. But, as complaints mounted into the hundreds, the Plant Board implemented a 120-day emergency ban that took effect that July. The board ultimately received about 1,000 complaints that summer, leading to the appointment of a gubernatorial task force that recommended an April 15 cutoff on spraying dicamba for the 2018 growing season.
The Plant Board adopted the recommendation, with supporters of the cutoff date saying it would protect backyard gardeners, homeowners whose ornamental shrubs and trees were at risk, and farmers who want to raise conventional crops and fruits and vegetables. About 200 dicamba complaints were received in 2018.
For this year, the board, after a controversial daylong hearing in the ballroom of a Little Rock hotel, voted to allow dicamba's use until the end of the day on May 25, pleasing some farmers and displeasing others.
The board's decision to extend spraying this year prompted Audubon Arkansas to recruit volunteers to monitor public areas for dicamba damage, such as in state and city parks, wildlife management areas and along county roads abutting farmland. Dan Scheiman, the group's bird conservation director, said photographs and other documentation turned in by the volunteers are still being reviewed by a crop expert retained by the group.
A Section on 07/25/2019